Break
by trufflemores
Summary: Flashpoint role reversal (Barry captive). 2nd person POV.


_This world does not belong to you._

It's a whisper in your consciousness that didn't stop you from knocking on Joe's door and asking, _Can we talk?_ It's a reminder in the back of your mind that didn't stay your hand as it curled over Iris', gently, a promise, a confession, a wistful culmination of _we-could-be-something_. It's a warning that failed to trip your alarms as you entered STAR Labs hoping for Cisco and Caitlin and found Eobard and a Speed-suppressing dart waiting for you instead.

You couldn't shake the absurd compulsion to make right that which was never broken here: to form relationships that feel like home, to draw strings together so that they will play familiar chords. You wanted winter here to feel like winter _there_ , a somewhere in that vast great incalculable unknown that calls to you, a place where you'll never know if it still snowed that year. You wanted to feel connected, somehow, to events of the past which bear no relationship to the present.

You wanted to feel loved in the ways that you were back home.

You wanted this world to feel like home.

But you were wrong to come here. And now you don't get to go.

It's only fair. After all, you are the antithesis of humanity: the one who broke the chain of living with it, whatever it was. Joy. Pain. Relief. Suffering. Your actions bear no incontrovertible consequences: you can change anything. Anything at all. Dream big. The world is yours to change.

You press both fists against the cell wall and wonder why you should even ask for your own freedom. The only way to be human is to be confined: to be called to lay down your goals for the sake of moving forward. To be free, you must be locked into a world. You must be forced to live with your actions.

You must surrender that which you love: the ability to run anywhere, anytime.

 _Surrender_ does not mean forfeit. It means _cease resistance_. It means submission, not deprivation.

Leaning forehead as well as closed fists against the wall, you shiver with exhaustion. You're just so _tired_. Wouldn't it be easier to submit to the rule of the universe than to defy it? It can only be on your side the day you let it.

Can you?

Can you _let_ life happen to you?

Eobard returns – you hear him, you feel him, you see him even behind closed eyelids – and closes in, crossing the expansive warehouse in steady, measured steps. He presses confining Speed against you, _anti_ -Speed, some powerful, intoxicating substance you have never been able to place or replicate – would never want to. The result is like a hand running upstream a cat's coat: your fists tighten in retaliation, sending out a tide of positive Speed Force in rebuke.

It's exactly what Eobard wants, drinking in your warmth as you lash out against his cold. You barely hear him over the rage in your own ears. You scoff when he says, _Humans can survive up to three weeks without food_. You want to bite back that humans can, but speedsters can't. You're two days into _no food_ and hungering hard. How much human will be left after a week?

How much Speed Force?

Eobard knows: _enough_.

He's right. You make it almost three months on starvation rations.

Then your strength fails you and the lightning vanishes. Not in slow, sorrowful _I'll-miss-you_ increments. It happens in a single night. All at once, with panic-inducing abruptness, you wake up and it's _gone_. It's like your heart stops. You lift a hand to your chest to confirm, eyes wide, gasping for breath in a suddenly airless room. Your vision narrows and darkens. Hunger returns with sickening force, as if the lightning were holding it back. Easing your suffering even when you did not deserve it.

You scream until you have no voice to speak when Eobard greets you the next morning. Realization hits him fast; his face pales as he walks towards you. Suddenly that aching reaching tide _burns_ , cold too intense for you to bear, and you retreat from it, shying back.

Eobard lets you out of your cage, but you don't run. Even when he punches you, you don't duck the blow; can't. He doesn't understand, refuses to, even though his Speed signature – that sinister red lightning – flares periodically in distress and rage.

 _You weren't supposed to die!_ it howls.

 _I'm not dead_ , you think, but every part that matters is.

He pushes you against the wall, a vibrating hand held aloft, and you look into those menacing red eyes and feel no fear.

 _I never needed you_ , you think, _you always needed me_.

For sustenance, for warmth, for companionship, for his very humanity. _You needed me_.

The day The Flash died is the day Eobard begins to die, too.

But you're still here, still fighting, and you know Flash is there, just not with you, not anymore. Like Farooq broke the connection, like Zoom broke the connection, so too Eobard breaks the connection you have with Flash. It still is. But the bond is gone.

It can be restored.

Eobard lowers his vibrating hand and gathers a fistful of your jacket. It's the only one you have, and you'd beg for a change of clothes if you thought it would make a difference, but it won't. Besides, this is the suit you and Flash were born in; it's only proper you die together in it. Eobard's hand on it feels wrong, but you don't fight him. You don't have the strength to. Maybe you never did.

Then, _Flash_ , it's that night again, and your breath comes in cold, anxious gasps as Eobard leaves you panting on the street corner. There's a storm inside that all-too-familiar house down the street. You walk towards it, lurching, duck-waddling, _running_ , but you cannot get there fast enough.

You push open the door.

You hear her soft sobs first, a faint moan of pain underlying the halting agony of each breath. With finite desperation you move towards the living room, knowing that it is already too-late to intervene. From the hallway you can see her lying on the wooden floor, bleeding out from a wound no one will properly attribute for fifteen years, tears tracking down her face.

 _You're not gonna kill her_ , you snarled in Eobard's face, _you're never gonna kill her again._

You were so, so _wrong_.

Before you can step inside that dark room on that broken night, Eobard takes that back of your jacket in hand and _Flash_.

It's cold and saturnalias at home, encroaching fall sloping towards longer nights and frigid days. No one notices you two standing on the porch of Joe's house; it's late enough that no one can be brought to look out the window for such strange sightings. People only see what they believe, you know, and time travelers are not part of that expectation.

Even as a breeze raises hairs along your arms, a familiar heat builds under your skin. The Flash's strength infuses you, the timeline restored to its former imperishable glory. Your relief is almost as powerful, Flash's presence like an embrace, firm and familiar, an undying partnership between you and something more.

As Flash comes up to speed, the clenched fist around your suit relaxes. When Eobard lets go, your human, coltish legs stumble on the porch, bringing you to your knees. Unconcerned, Eobard takes off, saturated on your Speed and bound for home, hopeful in the extreme of safe passage. With Flash's eyes you watch dispassionately as that other speedster disappears into the night, cataloguing each steady, powerful stroke as the dark waves of temporal resistance begin to crash over it. It's a dangerous journey, one which Eobard cannot complete alone – but, you know, is just possible with a gravity assist from The Flash.

With slow, heavy intent, you climb to your feet. You look out into the night where Eobard was. Conviction urges you to pursue. Exhaustion puts your closed fist against the wooden door instead, knocking twice. You almost sink to your haunches, ready to embrace crumbled earth and thinning grass. Instead, you keep an arm braced against the wall and let Joe take your weight as he steps forward and puts an arm under you shoulders, asking what happened with painful innocence.

You want to say, _I came home and to my senses._

You want to say, _I made and fixed a mistake_.

You want to say, _I gave into temptation and reality._

Instead, you look around the once-familiar room, superimposing police tape, rearranging furniture, sculpting a house you grew up in. You exhale. You say, "I needed some time."

Joe squeezes your shoulder, understanding but not, and you look over as Iris descends the stairs. You breathe, _Iris_ , and take a step towards her. She looks at you like she knows, she _knows_ , but she doesn't saying anything as she wraps her arms around you.

And all at once, as Flash floods you with satisfaction, you realize, _This is home_.


End file.
